


Prelude

by ohmister (roserising)



Series: Resurgence [1]
Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen, M/M, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-08
Updated: 2013-02-08
Packaged: 2017-11-28 15:35:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/676029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roserising/pseuds/ohmister
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They return to one another, each in turn. Or, in other words, "Everyone is reincarnated in modern America and everything is beautiful." This is the prologue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prelude

                        Enjolras is fire and light, beauty and purpose given flesh. That doesn't change, though the methods to what Grantaire fondly terms his madness by necessity do. He has a blog, four different emails (school, personal, activism/blog and family, the last of which is seldom checked for reasons only Combeferre knows), an undergraduate degree in Sociology with a minor in Political Science, and presence that would make the President stop and listen to him. He lives in the bad part of town and bristles when people call it a slum, works in a department store where women stare at him all day and he pretends it doesn't bother him as much as it does, and yells at the idiots at the local campus who keep holding demonstrations against abortion and gay marriage as a hobby. He is slender and tall and ties his very blond hair back in a loose ponytail when he's reading or at work, and he has graceful fingers and expressive eyes and he is stronger than he looks.

                        Grantaire is entranced by him. He is excited by him in exactly the same way that he was before, and that surprises him, because there are differences in both of them now. Because he is still a part-time drunk and a full-time cynic and a terrible artist, struggling through the fifth year of a leisurely stroll through a Literature degree and a half-hearted minor in Graphic Design. He barely holds down a part-time job in the same grocery that Courfeyrac works at, and works off his frustrations on cardboard boxes and stocking shelves. He is still wild, most of the time, and he still grins like a madman when he watches Enjolras give them hell at a protest, standing nearby but not within, with a beer and a desperation inside him that could never be stirred by politics or any other passion but what he holds for Enjolras, the kind of passion that makes him want to go down on one knee for him, legality be damned, to die for him, to die beside him again. He settles for the fact that Enjolras looks at him now, and speaks well of him, and if their hands touch sometimes in the dark he's fine with that, too.

                        There is something Grantaire would not exactly call a comfort but which approaches the concept, in the fact that they are not alone, and their friends have returned to be with them - some for longer than others. They appeared one by one, and they knew each other when they saw. Theirs was a kinship that didn't die easily.

                        Combeferre was the first, having made himself apparent even before Grantaire had met Enjolras again. This time, he has known Enjolras both of their lives, and is once again his confidant and opposite number, the one who softens the blows of his harsher words and goes to him when private words are needed. He is a graduate student in Education, passionate about public schools and history in particular, an occasional contributor to Enjolras's blog, and a manager at a restaurant in a slightly better part of town. He is perceptive, the one who always _knows_ and never has to ask. He owns more books than most of them put together, saves his money, and hands out flyers on occasion for causes or for Enjolras. His relationships are seldom the topic of conversation, but he and Jehan have spent a lot of time together, and it wouldn't be a stretch to say that Combeferre is sweet on the poet.

                        Courfeyrac was next, being as he is Grantaire's coworker and occasionally a student at the college, though his meandering attempts at a liberal arts degree have been derailed more than a few times by lack of funds or lack of ambition. In a word, Courfeyrac is mad - he is full-hearted and gossipy and everyone's best friend at once, alternately sweet and sarcastic, but once again completely devoted to the cause, whatever that might be on any given day. He is bold and bright, and even when he is sad he smiles, and the only thing he is afraid of is that Marius will find out about his feelings for him, which he never speaks and almost everyone knows.

                        By way of Combeferre, Jehan was the fourth of their group to return to them, after Grantaire. He is not so different from before, when he was a sad, sweet poet who loved flowers and weather and often turned his mind towards social justice. Now he works as a clerk at a jewelry store, has a window-box garden in his tiny studio apartment, and loves himself less than he loves anyone else. He comes to protests and events, a thin shadow with a shy smile and a flower in his hair, standing by Combeferre's side. He is light and shadow, the beautiful poet who writes about death and the memory of gunshot wounds.

                        Fifth were Feuilly and Bahorel, who live together and wouldn't be discovered separately. Feuilly works two or three minimum wage jobs at a time, donates his money with every paycheck, and has a smile that could melt ice. He studies history in his spare time with books he borrows from Enjolras and Combeferre, and keeps abreast of the issues enough that he comments sometimes on Enjolras's blog as well. Though he is often working, he has never been above trading a shift or taking off ten minutes early to attend a rally or just to be there for one of them who needed it. Bahorel, as always, is Feuilly's complement and better or worse half, depending on who you ask - better, for he is even more for the cause, more ambitious and more determined than Feuilly; or worse, for he loves a fight much more than Feuilly does and has no real "off" button for his opinions. He works for his uncle at a sign shop, which is the only way he's still employed, because he dislikes working (and school even more) as much as he loves rebelling, protesting and fighting. Courfeyrac once accused the pair of them of being married, and they haven't actually denied it.

                        Joly, presently a pre-med major on scholarship at the college, came sixth, and Bossuet shortly after. As manic as ever, Joly is a hypochondriac who makes better use out of the campus medical center than anyone in the history of the school, and he is mediated only by Bossuet's influence in his life. Bossuet, whose bad luck has continued for him through pre-law after a fashion and into his current position in life as a student in a law school and part-time bartender, is still the calm to Joly's frenetic storm, taking each day and event as it comes. They are both devoted in their own way to the causes that Enjolras largely finds for them all, at least as much as they're devoted to each other, even if they don't admit it aloud. Joly is still too good-natured for anyone to make fun of his name, and Bossuet is still a cool, easy-going contrast to the excitability of the rest. They had begun living together just after Bossuet got into law school, and have been more or less inseparable since.

                        Finally, there was Marius, by way of Courfeyrac, who felt it was the height of irony that he should be the one to find him after all this time. Marius is again a student of the law, a sweet and well-meaning young man whose memories of the past occasionally turn him melancholy, though his friends are quick to remind him that they are there, and fine. He works evenings at a deli and lives with Courfeyrac, out of habit and because it keeps him grounded and near to the center of things. If anything, he is less argumentative now, and more devoted to the cause, more willing to follow. He and Enjolras don't fight as often, and he is closer to the center of their little group. He spends most of his time reading, or talking with the others, or arguing on the internet, which occasionally gets him grief from Courfeyrac.

                        They meet at least once a day at a cafe that is almost exactly between the college and the apartment building where Enjolras and some of the others live, and it isn't the Musain but it doesn't have to be, even if sometimes it resembles it in a way. But now there are laptops, and Combeferre with his ever-present ereader, and Grantaire seeing how long it will take Enjolras to tell him to put away the small speaker he got for his iPod, with which he occasionally graces them with hard rock and metal he doesn't even listen to just because the look on Enjolras's face is completely fucking _priceless_. Eponine joins them sometimes, nursing a latte and helping draw up signs. Courfeyrac made friends with the owner months ago, so no one minds so much if they take over a couple of tables for their work, as long as they buy something, which they always do, even if Feuilly's paying for Bahorel and Eponine and Grantaire is putting liquor in his and getting dirty looks from Enjolras when he spots him. They work hard, and they study, and they play, and then they meander back to someone's apartment to continue from there.

                        They all know that the most important part is that they are all together, again. The barricades were gone, but that didn't mean that they were - or that the fight for a better world couldn't continue, even now. Enjolras has ambitions in that direction, and Grantaire intends to follow him into another grave if he has to.


End file.
